


time you can't replace

by Shadaras



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Depression, Gen, Hope, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 02:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5691868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey remembers, very clearly, the first day she woke up wanting to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time you can't replace

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from Anberlin's song ["Soft Skeletons"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuv6aehPnbA)

Rey remembers, very clearly, the first day she woke up wanting to die.

She was seven years old, and she had been on Jakku for almost two years. She could still recall the scent of water in the air, and the way hyperspace looked, but the memories felt like dreams, and that day (it was the end of the calm period, the beginning of the wind times, and sand rattled against the tough hide walls of the shelter she was allowed to share) she woke from a dream of the desert swallowing her up.

The dream had been peaceful. There had been the sand, and the endless blue of the sky, and nothing else. A whisper of wind, maybe, but that was fading too. In the dream, she had been covered with sand, but instead of working its way through her rough clothes to her skin, it had wrapped around her with cool pressure. Rey thought of it almost like the desert itself was giving her a hug. And then, in the dream, she had just... sunk into the sand.

Nothing could touch her there. She was safe from Unkar Plutt’s shouts and swats, safe from the burning sun, safe from the looks of pity that everyone on Jakku gaver her. She had closed her eyes and melted into the darkness and the sand, and reveled in the coolness that wrapped around her.

And then she’d woken up to the shouts and grunts of another fight, and she’d woken up to the rattle of cruel sand, and she’d woken up to the promise of blistering heat, and she’d woken up to the thought, _I wish I could have stayed there._

She doesn’t realise for another three years that staying in dream is just another kind of dying.

*

Rey knows where the first scars she ever left on her body are, though nobody else can see them now.

She was nine, and Unkar Plutt had decided she was old enough that she could earn her own living. She didn’t deserve his charity anymore; the payment he’d been given when she was left on Jakku had long since run out. So she was sent off to join one of the gangs of scavengers, people too old or young or weak or broken to go on long journeys on their own, who lived or died together.

It was wonderful for approximately twelve hours. When night fell, though, she cried silent, empty tears, body shuddering with something she couldn’t quite call fear but didn’t know any other word for. She’d hated the den Plutt had given her. She missed the den Plutt had given her. The utilitarian wrap the scavenger pack had allotted her kept her warm enough, but it didn’t feel _safe_ in the way that even the approximation of walls did.

The next morning she had woken up and discovered how little she knew, compared to the rest of the pack. She was slowest, her hands the least sure, and she trailed behind them on their return journey, just another back to haul their load.

She had no dinner that night.

She distracted herself from the gnaw of hunger (she hadn’t eaten the last day, either, and had barely been given anything the day before) by the ragged draw of her knife across her hips. She didn’t usually press hard enough to break skin, just hard enough to leave harsh red lines, hidden by the folds of her clothes.

That night, she cut deep enough to bleed, sluggish drops that made her gasp with pain and relief all at once, as she stared at the slow crawl over the bony plates of her body. The first one had been an accident. The second, and the third, were deliberate, and she went to sleep that night calm, the cuts on her hip just another ache among the bruises and scrapes she’d collected by more accidental means.

*

Rey can’t forget the first time she tried to kill herself.

She’d been thirteen, striking out on her own for the first time, and it hadn’t exactly been a conscious decision at first. She’d started climbing the Star Destroyers because she was small and quick and could climb better than anyone else. She’d kept at it because she the adrenaline rush was the sweetest thing she could find in the endless desert.

She’d be hanging onto the side of one of the hangers, clipped on to a support strut by a single line as she worked to first open a door and then pull out its power cell, and a thought would keep interfering: _What if I cut it?_

She didn’t. Not then. Not for the rest of the week, even. Not until she was coming out of the passage, and she hadn’t clipped herself in because there were enough handholds inside to be safe without them, and she hung at the edge of the tilted hanger, and looked down to the sand below. It was a good twelve meters straight, at least, and if she jumped far enough, she’d be able to--

Without giving it further thought, she made sure her sack of salvage was tied securely, and let it drop. It hit the slanted floor with a satisfying _clang_ and rattled all the way down to the sand. Then she jumped.

For a moment it was the most amazing experience. She was in free-fall, and she was _flying_ , and she couldn’t help but laugh in sheer joy, for the first time she could easily recall.

Then she hit the metal floor and rolled without thinking, softening the landing until she came to a stop, panting, bruised and scraped all over and still -- somehow, unsatisfyingly -- alive. She ached, from her skin to her bones, from her eyes to her lungs, and there was _something_ that had snapped inside of her.

She lay there, staring up at the tilted ceiling, and let bitter tears seep, just a few drops, from her eyes.

She couldn’t even get dying right.

*

Rey doesn’t tell anyone about the first day she woke up wanting to live.

It’s the day she wakes up on the Resistance Base in D’Qar, and there’s a vibrancy and life all around her. Even when she and Finn had stolen the _Falcon_ , or when Han Solo himself had halfway offered her a job, she hadn’t wanted to live. She had known, then that she was going back to Jakku and nothing was going to get better. Nothing was going to change.

When the lightsaber and Maz had told her of the Force, she’d been too afraid. When Kylo Ren had raped her mind, she’d wanted to kill him, but she hadn’t wanted to live.

Fighting Kylo Ren, after Han had died, after Finn was almost dead, she’d realised that she wasn’t just fighting for herself anymore.

She destroyed his lightsaber, scarred his face, and didn’t strike the killing blow. She wouldn’t be able to live if she did, she had realised during the moment he had offered to teach her, the moment he could have killed her but didn’t. And maybe she’d never know his reasons, but he’d had them, and if he couldn’t kill her, then she couldn’t stoop beneath _his_ level.

Finn was alive. Leia Organa had welcomed her with open arms. The Resistance had given her food, and a place to sleep, and even in mourning it was filled with laughter.

She wakes up that next day, and it’s a sensation of something _missing_ that she notices first. It’s the absence of wanting to die. And maybe it isn’t much, that newly sprouted seed of hope, but she thinks, breathing in the cool, moist air, that maybe this can last.

Maybe she can find a family here.


End file.
